Just the Ticket #226: Godzilla vs SpaceGodzilla
Article by Sean Wilkinson,
a.k.a. The Ticketmaster.
I guess this turned out to be the week of crystal-themed villains, huh?
Though I saw today's Goj-Year-ra entry almost a week ago, and took notes as I watched, I didn't write this review until early Thursday morning (like, at 2am because it's too hot to sleep and deadlines exist) because I didn't have anything interesting to say for an intro (and considering I put myself in a time crunch so I could spend the intro talking about how and why I put myself in a time crunch, I still don't) besides the Polish title being Godzilla vs CosmicGodzilla (not to be confused with Godzilla vs the Cosmic Monster). No quirky production history to speak of, no other international title weirdness; just a mostly successful attempt at making a good Heisei Era kaiju movie where the humans and monsters both matter and the villain isn't just Showa nostalgia bait.
It was the writer/director duo's idea to give Miki more of a focus and make the tone more lighthearted, though this latter is both more and less successful of a decision than intended, for a variety of reasons that I'll get into as I go.
Godzilla vs SpaceGodzilla's strength (and one of its many weaknesses) lies in how it uses its human characters, starting things off at ground level with a variety of factions, ideals, and goals, rather than just depicting the UN Godzilla Countermeasure Center (UNGCC, or G-Center) as a massive government entity obsessed with killing Godzilla like in previous entries. This starts with the G-Center's two projects: Project M (the development of MOGUERA—the awkwardly forced acronym, Mobile Operations G-Force Universal Expert Robot: Aero-type) and Project T (a less lethal solution—not that government-made weapons in the Godzilla universe have ever been particularly lethal for their intended target—of using telepathy-based technology to control Godzilla, possibly inspired by the writer and director's experience working on the production of Terror Of Mechagodzilla).
On Birth Island (not to be confused with Infant Island), we meet eventual MOGUERA pilots Koji Shinjo (Jun Hashizume, Godzilla: Final Wars, and the voice of the king in Clevatess), Kiyoshi Sato (Zenkichi Yoneyama, Sukiyaki Western Django), and Akira Yuki (Akira Emoto, Shall We Dance?), as well as Little Godzilla (who looks goofy as shit after his growth spurt since the last film, and is played by Little Frankie now). Shinjo and Sato initially come off as generic, plucky G-Force grunts, but Yuki exudes 90s action hero cool (because attitude and cigarettes), brings some continuity and sympathetic motivation to this entry as a close friend of the late Colonel Gondo (my favorite human from the Biollante film), and his character arc has strong Captain Ahab vibes (though with a much healthier, happier outcome that feels more like a battle shōnen rivalry than tragic obsession running its course). Yuki is also suggested strongly throughout the film to be romantically involved with his late friend's sister, Chinatsu Gondo (TV actress Towako Yoshikawa), who is a chief researcher on Project T and...convinces Miki to participate.
This is the first instance where I noticed the lighter tone failing. Like, yeah, Yuki's obsession with killing Godzilla has some easily read PTSD subtext to it (that the movie just spells out later in exposition anyway because nearly all Heisei Era films seem to do that), but it's softened by Emoto's machismo-laden performance. With Miki, though, Chinatsu and Dr. Okubo (the other Project T researcher, who turns evil out of nowhere later, and is played by Gunhed's Yôsuke Saitô) threaten to have one of the children at the Psychic Center test their Godzilla Cerebro machine unless she agrees to do it instead. An easy line to miss, but it's fucking dark.
With Shinjo's sniping skills, though, Project T ends up working until they try increasing the device's power beyond capacity and almost frying Miki's brain. Despite the setback (and the secondary MOGUERA crew encountering SpaceGodzilla...in space!), Miki chooses to stay behind on Birth Island to connect with Godzilla and Little Godzilla her own way (changing her entire outfit from red to white between cuts), and Shinjo (with Sato tagging along because he is also there) decides to join her because she gives him the tingly bits and he wants her to "stop thinking about Godzilla and start thinking about romance and a man's feelings" (I'm paraphrasing, but yes; he basically asks the main, top-billed heroine of the movie to not do what makes her an important, empathetic character because he's horny and she's a woman. I'd say fuck this guy, but I'm afraid Miki would interpret that literally and make this movie worse.
Oh, wait; she gets turned into a damsel in distress almost immediately so Shinjo and Sato have to rescue her from Okubo and the mafia (Yuki gets the red herring treatment as the mastermind of this, but the story does away with all mystery just as fast, simplifying it down to Okubo using mafia resources so he can use Godzilla for
This "put stuff in the movie with no basis or explanation" thing seems to be an ongoing problem with Godzilla vs SpaceGodzilla. There's a literal unfired Chekov's Gun in here, too (Yuki has a special coagulant bullet that he intends to use on Godzilla throughout the film, but it never comes into play beyond the thematic importance of its non-use), but most of the issues (when not caused by migraine-inducing time travel paradoxes or cultural chauvinism) trend in the opposite direction, such as Okubo turning evil because he's in the movie and needs something to do, the movie supposedly being about Godzilla rescuing Little from SpaceGodzilla even though the scene depicting this motivation was cut (Kenpachiro Satsuma hated this decision) to preserve the lighter tone of a movie with child endangerment, blood, PTSD, and Yuki's uncensored, showering ass...and then there's pretty much everything about SpaceGodzilla (Ryō Haritani, Godzilla vs Destoroyah).
So, let's talk about SpaceGodzilla. But first, let's talk about Biollante, Mothra, and Godzilla, in no particular order, because the explanation of SpaceGodzilla gave me strong IndoRaptor vibes.
In the spirit of Heisei "weirdness," Mothra has been depicted as an ancient Earth goddess with strong Buddhist underpinnings of rebirth and transformation and the necessity of a dark side (hence Battra), departing a little from her traditional kaiju origins, with the Cosmos being energy constructs of her will so she can communicate with humans, rather than genetically anomalous, psychic twin humans themselves. In Godzilla vs SpaceGodzilla, it is speculated that she carried some of Godzilla's cells into space at the end of Godzilla vs Mothra. Also, Miki is shown to be wearing earrings in the shape of Mothra's seal, communicating with the Cosmos (whom no one else can see, apparently), and having telekinesis that feels like more inexplicably added stuff for its own sake at first, but does serve a purpose in resolving the film's narrative and themes. So it's possible that psychic powers in this continuity are meant to be a gift from Mothra to facilitate harmony and empathy (but we're human, so it just becomes another weapon against what we fear, which really sucks because so do we).
Now for Godzilla and my insane theory I now have about him because of Rodan. I keep meaning to bring this up and I haven't yet for whatever reason (self-imposed crunch and not remembering to work it into my drafts, if I'm being honest with myself), but Heisei Godzilla has another ability besides his atomic breath that he's used against several opponents throughout the Era: an atomic feedback pulse. It usually radiates from his core in a spherical shockwave akin to a Dragon Ball ki explosion, but he's also focused it along conductive surfaces like in his first round against Mechagodzilla. That's not my theory because it's shown in several films (I just wanted to talk about it), but it could feed into my theory, so to speak. And that is that Godzilla can also absorb energy. I mean, we've known that from the beginning because he drinks nuclear reactors and has been revived by absorbing nuclear fallout, electricity, and the power of a massive meteor impact. But I think it goes beyond that. Thanks to Rodan absorbing into Godzilla to heal him and give him stronger breath, I can speculate that Godzilla is able to absorb other kaiju like he has Megaman powers. He did it to King Ghidorah (which is theoretically why the UNGCC only found the Mecha chassis), and he did it to Battra (which is how he broke Mothra's seal, although I like the sheer willpower explanation quite a bit better).
Which brings us to Biollante, and logically (for my brain, anyway), back to the unnecessarily convoluted IndoRaptor-ness of SpaceGodzilla. You might remember that Biollante is a rose cross-bred with the DNA and soul of Erika Kirishima, then mutated into an immortal kaiju plant goddess by Godzilla cells and radiotrophic bacteria. Well, scientific research in the film ultimately concludes that Biollante took some of Godzilla's cells with her when she clipshow teleported into being a giant Phantom Zone rose construct in space, and some of her spores and those Godzilla cells got sucked into a black hole with some weird bio-crystals before white-holing out as a fully formed SpaceGodzilla. Yes, SpaceGodzilla is part human, part rose, part bacteria, part Godzilla, part crystal, part dark matter, part white matter, and part Godzilla again.
But getting back to the point of why SpaceGodzilla is just more stuff added to the movie with no point, he's often criticized in the fandom for being evil and cruel to children and overrated, among other things. But his real general problem is that he's a cool design meant to make the final battle look video gamey and toyetic (not bad things here, to be fair; the finale is incredible, bringing back the "humans and kaiju can work together against a common foe" dynamic that I enjoyed about Godzilla vs Hedorah, and featuring some fun combat vehicle action with the MOGUERA modules) and not have much of substance to him otherwise. We're told he was made and sent to kill Godzilla and conquer Earth, but not why or by whom. He chooses Fukuoka to turn into a Fortress Of Solitude-like crystal stronghold, and we're told through speculation that he's using Fukuoka Tower as a power converter, but not why (it's in the Wikipedia summary, but I genuinely don't remember getting an in-Universe explanation), and it's just a Heisei-esque barrage of lightning effects and a Jesus pose with crystal rockets. He kidnaps Little Godzilla, but there's that cut scene I mentioned earlier, and Little Godzilla just disappears from the movie until he's shown to be free somehow at the end because maybe the crystals vanished when SpaceGodzilla was killed? Throw on some half-assed moral (literally, because Japan's space junk-cleanup initiative that they started in the 90s is abbreviated as JSASS) about how this movie means we're supposed to be kind to space or another SpaceGodzilla will appear someday (it's literally the moral of Godzilla '54 and Return Of Godzilla with the word "space" shoved into it, as is the rule), even though we know the real moral is about dealing with trauma and loss in a healthy way and sharing your burden with others instead of trying to face your demons alone, and Godzilla vs SpaceGodzilla feels less like a completed work of passion than a half-measure of obligation where the monsters are concerned.
D+
Speaking of half-measured obligations, my slightly edited copypasta below reminds you that next week, Zenescope will give us a unique take on Valentine's Day, and I belatedly celebrate Bastille Day with a look at last year's Superman (which also has a kaiju in it). So Stay Tuned for that, and please continue to support me and what I do by Becoming A Ticketholder if you haven't already, leave a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, help out my ad revenue as you read, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.
38
Ticketmaster,
Out.
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